“Wasn’t it Mayta who planned everything, then?” I abruptly ask him. “Wasn’t it he who orchestrated all the details of the uprising?”
The surprise reflected in his half-reddened face, which is full of white spots from his whiskers, seems genuine. As if he had heard incorrectly and knew nothing about what I was saying.
“Trotskyite Mayta the intellectual author of the uprising?” He carefully pronounces the words, with that overly precise mountain diction, which barely allows the syllables out of his mouth. “What an idea! When he got here, everything had already been arranged by Vallejos and me. He had nothing to do with it until the very end. I’m going to say something else. He was only informed of the details at the last minute.”
“Because you didn’t trust him?” I interrupt.
“Just as a precaution,” says Professor Ubilluz. “Well, if you prefer the word ‘trust,’ then yes, because we didn’t trust him. Not that we thought he was a squealer, but that he might be afraid. Vallejos and I decided to keep him in ignorance, as soon as we figured out that he had no one behind him, that he was on his own. Would it have been surprising that at the critical moment the poor guy would turn tail and run? He wasn’t one of us, and he couldn’t really take the altitude. He had no knowledge of weapons. Vallejos taught him how to shoot on a beach near Lima. A hell of a revolutionary to dig up! They say he was even a fag.”
He laughs, with his usual forced giggle. I’m just about to say that, unlike him, who wasn’t where he was supposed to be — and I hope he explains why — Mayta, despite his mountain sickness and his representing no one else, was alongside Vallejos when — to use Ubilluz’s own expression—“the potatoes fell in the fire.” I’m just about to tell him that lots of other people have said about him exactly what he’s saying about Mayta: that he was really the one to blame, that he was the deserter. But of course I say nothing at all. I’m not here to contradict anyone. My job is to listen, observe, compare stories, mix it all together and weave a fantasy. Again, we hear the metallic sound of the armored car and the trotting soldiers.
When one of the boys said, “It’s time to go,” Mayta felt relieved. He was feeling better, after having gone through some moments of agony. He answered the questions posed by Ubilluz, Vallejos, the joeboys, and at the same time he was keenly aware of the malaise that was crushing his head and chest and seemed to be churning his blood. Had he answered well? At least he seemed sure of himself, even if nothing was further from the truth, and in allaying the fears of the boys, he had tried not to lie even as he avoided telling truths that might dampen their enthusiasm.
It wasn’t easy. Would the Lima working class support them once the revolutionary action began? Yes, but not right away. At the beginning, the workers would be indecisive, confused because of the misinformation the newspapers and radio would spread and because of the lies those in power and the bourgeois parties would tell. They would be paralyzed by brutality and repression. But that very repression would quickly open their eyes, revealing just which group was defending their interests, and which was, in addition to exploiting them, deceiving them. The revolutionary action would push the class struggle to heights of violence.
Mayta was moved by the boys’ wide-open eyes and their attentive immobility. They believe everything you tell them. Now, while the joeboys were saying goodbye to him, ceremoniously shaking his hand, he asked himself just what in fact the attitude of the Lima proletariat would be when the action began. Hostility? Scorn for that vanguard fighting for them out in the mountains? The fact was that APRA controlled the unions, that they were allied with the Prado government, and opposed to anything that smacked of socialism. It might be different with a few unions, like Civil Construction, in which the Communist Party had some influence. No, probably not. Those guys would accuse us of being provocateurs, of playing along with the government, of serving them on a silver platter the pretext for outlawing the party and deporting and jailing the progressives. He could imagine the headlines in Unity, the comments in the handbills they would distribute, and the articles that would appear in the Workers Voice published by the rival RWP. Yes, that would all hold true for the first phase. But, he was sure, if the uprising were to last, develop, undermine bourgeois power here and there, oblige it to discard its liberal mask and show its bloodied face, the working class would shake off its lethargy, all the reformist deceptions, all its corrupt leaders, all those illusions of being able to coexist with the sellouts, and would join the struggle.
“Well, the chicks have gone to roost.” Shorty Ubilluz went to the pile of books, pamphlets, newspapers, cobwebs in his studio and dug out a jug and some glasses. “Now let’s have a drink.”
“How did the boys seem to you?” Vallejos asked him.
“Very enthusiastic, but still wet behind the ears,” Mayta said. “Some of them can’t be more than fifteen, right? Are you sure you can depend on them?”
“You have no faith in our young people.” Vallejos laughed. “Sure we can depend on them.”
“Remember González Prada.” Shorty Ubilluz began to quote, sliding around the bookcases like a gnome and getting back into his chair. “The old fogies to the grave, and the young to work.”
“And every man to his assigned job.” Vallejos smacked his fist into his palm, and Mayta thought: I hear him and I have no doubts. It seems that everything will bend to his will, he’s a born leader, a central committee all by himself. “Nobody’s going to make these boys shoot anyone. They’re going to be messengers.”
“The messenger boys of the revolution,” Shorty Ubilluz baptized them. “I’ve known them since they learned how to crawl. They’re the best of the joeboys.”
“They’ll be in charge of communications,” Vallejos explained, waving his arms back and forth. “They’ll maintain contact between the guerrillas and the city; they’ll carry dispatches, supplies, medicine, matériel. And because they’re kids, they won’t be noticed. They know these mountains like the back of their hands. We’ve taken long hikes, and I’ve trained them in forced marches. They’re terrific.”
They jumped off ridges and landed on their feet without breaking their heads, as if they were made of rubber. They swam rushing creeks like fish, without being swept downstream or smashed against the rocks. They went through snow without suffering from the cold, and they ran and jumped at the highest altitudes without any problems. His heart rate had speeded up and the pressure of his blood on his temples was once again intolerable. Should he say something about it? Should he ask for some coca tea, anything, to relieve that anguish?
“Tomorrow, in Ricrán, you’ll meet the ones who will do the fighting,” Vallejos said. “Get ready to climb some mountains and to see llamas and mountain grass.”
Despite his malaise, Mayta became aware of the silence. It came from outside, it was tangible, it would be there whenever Shorty Ubilluz or Vallejos fell silent. Between a question and an answer, any time a speaker paused — that absence of motors, horns, screeching brakes, acceleration, and voices seemed to have its own sound. That silence must have covered Jauja like a night laid over the night; it was a thick presence in the room, and it rattled him. That exterior void, that lack of animal, mechanical, or human life out there on the street seemed so strange to him. He never remembered having experienced such an outrageous silence in Lima, not even in the prisons (the Sexto, the Panóptico, the Frontón) where he’d spent a few seasons. When Vallejos and Ubilluz broke it, they seemed to profane something.
His malaise had diminished, but his anxiety remained, because he knew the loss of breath, the racing pulse, the pressure, the icy chill could come back at any moment. Shorty toasted him, and he, making an effort to smile, raised the glass to his lips. The fiery pisco shook him. How absurd, he thought. It’s only 180 miles to Lima, and it’s as if you were a foreigner in an unknown world. What kind of a country is this where, by just going from one place to another, you turn into a gringo or a Martian? He felt ashamed of knowing nothing at all about the mountains, of knowing nothing at all about the world of the peasants. He paid attention again to what Vallejos and Ubilluz were saying. They were talking about a community on the eastern slope of the mountains, the one that ran right into the jungle: Uchubamba.